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Friday, October 25, 2013

`See the World More Clearly Than Before'

My
youngest son came home from walking the dog and said as I stood in the kitchen,
“Dad, I got something for your birthday. I know it’s not until Saturday but
this might not last till then.” In his hand was a monarch butterfly, dead but
still freshly lifelike, antennae intact. The wings, unfrayed and softly
iridescent, were closed. Though freighted with a thousand associations in
memory, it weighed nothing in my hand. For safe keeping, I put it in a glass
inkwell a friend gave me thirty years ago, and screwed on the top. Life is
allegory for those who pay attention. See “In Late November” (The Glass House, 2009) by Daniel Mark
Epstein:

“Of
the butterfly-bush, whose purple flowers

The
monarch and the swallowtail

Sipped
in August, near my windowpane

(Such
a wealth of wings and flower clusters

I
could hardly see the grass, the trees)

Only
stalks and branches remain,

And
panicles tipped with russet berries.

Now
I see everything so vividly:

The
young woman on her hands and knees,

Planting
the meek shrubs three years ago --

Three
short years and thirteen feet below --

Told
me the light was perfect here and so

The
plants would thrive, just wait and see

How
gracefully the flowers would bear wings.

I
would see her when she was not there,

Then
go blind, standing right beside her.

How
could I begin to explain such things?

Soon
enough the blossoms reached my sill,

A
floor above her terrace flat. Too late

For
her to see the wonder she had wrought

Or
for me to tell her. She'd moved out.

I
never dreamed these branches in full bloom

Would
all but block the summer view below:

Garden,
gardener and terrace door,

Casting
a dappled shadow across my room.

I
never knew that when November came

I
would miss the butterflies so much

And
see the world more clearly than before.”

With
age, one comes to see things in time-lapse. Flux becomes visible. Everything is
itself and multiple – what it was, what it will be. Epstein writes of vision
and how it changes over time. Of the past: “Now I see everything so vividly.”
And of the present that once was future: “And see the world more clearly than
before.” Epstein’s poem reminds me of E.A. Robinson’s “The Poor Relation” (The Man Against the Sky, 1916), which in
turn reminds me of Anthony Hecht’s “The Transparent Man” (The Transparent Man, 1990). Robinson’s title character sees the “good
ghost,” herself in youth:

“But
one friend always reappears,

A
good ghost, not to be forsaken;

Whereat
she laughs and has no fears

Of
what a ghost may reawaken,

But
welcomes, while she wears and mends

The
poor relation's odds and ends,

Her
truant from a tomb of years --

Her
power of youth so early taken.”

Robinson’s
voice is wryly grave where Epstein’s is chastened and wistful, which suggests the
difference between third-person and first-person narration. Told by an “I,” “The
Poor Relation” would skirt if not spill over into mawkishness. For Epstein,
missing the butterflies of summer and seeing the world more clearly in November
are joined.